Lukewarm Coffee, Addiction and Sleeplessness

Today, I rekindle my love affair with coffee.

Nothing fancy, just a pot of barako dregs from the early morning coffee my parents and brother take before rushing off to school. Probably explains why it's a bit too watery for its own good. I did experiment with using chocolate milk to sweeten it, though. My proportion: a little more than half milk, a little less than half coffee, making you sleepy-full and caffeine-jumpy in equal proportions.

Back then, it was a blender, a tray of ice cubes, a pack of instant Nescafe and whatever ingredients I wanted to play around with that time. Before I even tasted my first Starbucks frapp (which was a bit too sweet for me anyway), I was trying to be a drink-mixing genius on my own. I even went so far as reading Dad's old bartending books, which I quit eventually: being a barista is one thing, but being a bartender means having stocks of every drink you want to experiment with, plus a lot people to experiment on, something that didn't coincide with my introvert nature back then. But back to the blender, where I tried mixing crushed ice, milk (fresh or chocolate) and coffee with M&M's, bananas, peanut butter, Reese's pieces, Curly Tops, Flat Tops, mint leaves, cookies n' cream ice cream, Kahlua, creme de menthe and Chocnut, which I always made my parents try (Papa would always say it's okay, Mama would always say it was too creamy and heavy on the stomach). And after everything, Mama would scold me for putting coffee into my drinks again, saying that too much coffee is bad for me.

Ahh, Caffeine, the legal drug. Now that I think about it, I was always into any legal stuff that didn't involve smoking (caffeine in coffee, caffeine in Mountain Dew, alcohol, etc., no cough syrup though). It's fun stretching the definitions of what counts as bad for you and what doesn't: during the dress rehearsal of the "Tao" production, I downed a Biogesic with a sachet of water mixed with Extra Joss and a glass of Coke to get a fatigue-induced fever off me. I was able to perform the choreography, which involved lifting a person and stuff, a bit better. Needless to say, I literally crashed that night.

Am at my fourth cup now, as I write this line. Darn, this is getting addicting again. They did say, though, that life is a continuous chain, one addiction after another, whether it's the high of caffeine, a sugar rush, the satisfaction of buying something you've been wanting for months with your 13th month bonus, the feeling of others' attentions focused on you, the afterglow of sex, the rush of adrenaline when watching an MMA fight, the titillation that comes with falling in love, the rush of blood to the head when hanging upside down, the warmth that comes with doing charity work, and many other exhilarations in life.

Epilogue...

Me: "Darn, you're not going to get any sleep tonight, are you?"
Myself: "All the better to write with, my dear."

*laugh*